This is not the first domain name I’ve purchased, I’ve owned dozens over the years… but this is the FIRST time this has happened with such frequency and inconvenience.

It is getting worse. Out of control. I blame a number of companies that have popped up offering very cheap access to Whois data for newly registered domains and marketing it as a way to get fresh leads.

I don’t care if WHOIS is publicly available, GoDaddy MUST provide a free service to counter the increase in robocalls, spam mail, and spam SMS. I’ve received dozens in less than 24hrs of purchasing a domain name through GoDaddy.

I’ve read the threads and GoDaddy passes the blame on 3rd parties and claims to have no control over this. I say that’s a load of rubbish. GoDaddy should provide, as a FREE service, the ability to use an alias email and phone number for registrars.

While some registrars offer this for free, I bet DomainsByProxy is a big revenue generator. It’s also worth pointing out that running a proxy or privacy service isn’t free. There are some pretty big headaches that come along with operating these services. If GoDaddy or any other registrar offers proxy for free, they will likely increase the prices they charge to register a domain.

GoDaddy is, however, getting ready to mask email and phone numbers from port 43 whois lookups starting January 25. Will this reduce the amount of spam? I hope so.

There is also no clear directions on how to go about removing one’s information from robocallers once your WHOIS information goes public.

Sorry. Once it’s in, you’re screwed. These companies doesn’t respect any Do Not Call lists, either.

I am seriously mad at GoDaddy for wasting my time having to deal with all this and having to write this post. And WHY must a phone number and email address be required in the first place. If it’s a law then that has to change because robocallers and these spamming **bleep**tards are getting more sophisticated and ambitious.

ICANN. But, historically it was never an issue. There are good reasons to have this info public as long as people aren’t abusing it.

I really hope GoDaddy can address this problem so many people are having!!!!

Comments

This is getting incredibly bad, and I registered a .US and .Co.UK ((that do not have the option for privacy) and I was appalled at the sheer amount of SPAM that came pouring into my email box within a few hours of the registration. I also received multiple security emails from firms reporting that entities using IPs from Africa had tried to impersonate me to gain access to various accounts using my name and email (thankfully I use a different email, hence the security alert).

I believe the WHOIS system does have some benefits, but there has to be some level of control over who has free access to this data, as right now it’s a real mess and there are significant security risks.

(2) Use a gmail email address if you don’t know how to filter on cpanel. Google will spambox 99% for you.

(3) Privacy blocking all of WHOIS is a bad idea. Phone and Email I’d love to see automatically blocked. Legal owner full name and address is all we need and should not be blocked similar to property laws in effect now.

How do you expect to sue a spam database website if you can’t identify them? Someone ripped you off how do you identify them? Shill bidding and auction / registrar conflicts of interest how do you identify them? Copyright issues, they copied your website how do you identify them?

If they list false whois then the registrar is obligated to take down the site.Legal owner not identifiable.

You need a way to identify legal owners of property (cars, house, boat, business, now domains) so you can easily send legal letters to the address on record without the police or court order. We don’t need to call or email them.

I hope people start to speak out about this as it looks like the current push is towards whois privacy as the default. If you need privacy then create a LLC of one person online and use that as your legal owner. It still allows for other web developers to send you legal letters if you do illegal stuff.

The registration and regulation of call centers that call into the US is done on the state level. State requirements vary considerably. Some states have “ask for permission” requirements that must be fulfilled before a solicitation can be made. Others have rules that bar rebuttals, if a call recipient declines to proceed. Some states have both requirements. Others have none.

The above requirements, which are rarely enforced, only cover residential-telephone numbers, spurring call centers to target commercial enterprises. Government-mandated do-not-call lists do not cover commercial enterprises. It could be argued that individuals registering domains should not be considered commercial enterprises.

In the early days of this century, when the Indian call center industry was just getting started, offshore call centers would lease T1s that went through US telecom hubs. This often allowed callers to be traced. Now most of the small shops are going through the cloud, which makes them difficult to trace without the use of honeypots. Voice may only represent 20% or less of the work being done by offshore facilities, especially the small non-merchant (captive) ones, so many facility operators do not formally consider themselves to be call centers.

It would take considerable political capital to change the current system, which could begin with a centralized and affordable registration system that would capture the 20% shops described above. The National Association of Attorneys General is well positioned to take a cooperative leadership role here, but has thus far declined to do so. On the positive side, state-level law enforcement agencies in India largely appear ready and willing to cooperate with US enforcement efforts, if they were to be asked to do so.

This sounds all too familiar, with up to 13 unsolicited calls per hour and 20+ spam emails per day where it’s the calls that are the most annoying causing the most frustration and disruption.

I’ve found that good filtering has helped, and a well scripted F.O. auto-responder identifying the usual suspect keywords. BT Call Guardian (UK) on my landline blocks practically all cold calling. Installing a call blocking app (Should I answer?) on my mobile phone, banning foreign numbers, hidden numbers and anyone not already listed in my white book. Relative silence is achieved, although log files still reveal a flood of unsolicited contact. Occasionally, this means that some genuine contact is blocked but they will often contact you directly via private messaging on an account specific website and then granted permission in your filters.

“Don’t fix it, if it’s not broken”. The abuse of whois data is clearly broken.